Todd Bowles didn’t want any of his Jets watching the ball drop in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. You see, the Jets are planning their New Year’s Eve party for 4 o’clock Sunday inside Ralph Wilson Stadium, in front of Rex Ryan and the Bills.

“We’ve discussed it, we talked about it after practice, we understand we can’t let one night ruin what you’re going into this weekend … you can’t babysit them all,” Bowles said. “They can run out to New York City and have fun and do everything you need to do, but understand what you have ahead of you and what you’re coming into tomorrow.”

Calvin Pryor understood. Asked how he would spend his New Year’s Eve, Pryor told The Post: “Chillin’. I got something way bigger than New Year’s that I’m focusing on.”

For many of them — Pryor, Muhammad Wilkerson, Sheldon Richardson, Demario Davis, of course Ryan Fitzpatrick and Brandon Marshall, among others — it will mark their first time in the playoffs if they can seal the deal with their sixth straight win.

It’s what they play for, why they shed all that blood and sweat and all those tears. It is what they have dreamed about since they were boys, sharing the thrill of victory with their band of brothers, sometimes with their fans, sometimes inside a silent, shell-shocked stadium, hushed and held hostage to yelps of triumph piercing the air everywhere.

Darrelle Revis was in his third season when the Jets obliterated the Bengals 37-0 on a riotous Sunday night in the last game at Giants Stadium on Jan. 3, 2010.

“We knew what the stakes were. It’s basically the same situation we’re in today, or this week,” Revis told The Post. “We knew what the stakes were to get in, and we knew we had to go through the Bengals to win it, and we knew that if we win, we would have to go to Cincinnati to play them. That’s where we wanted to be.”

It was Ryan’s first playoff victory as Jets coach.

“It was mind-blowing, it was very mind-blowing to sit there … the previous years you’re sitting at home and watching everybody play,” Revis said. “And you have these team goals before the season to sit here and say, ‘Hey, we want to win the Super Bowl.’ And, you get your dreams crushed when you don’t make the playoffs the previous years. So, to actually finally get there, and be like, ‘Wow, we’re here,’ but now we have to make some noise, we have to advance week-to-week to get where we want to go.”

It was a freezing night, all the more perfect for a warm embrace between players and fans. Ryan was given a game ball afterwards.

“We ran around the whole stadium, giving high-fives to fans,” Revis recalled. “I think it was a big turning point for the Jets organization, for the future in the whole. Rex came in and dictated that. I don’t know if you remember his press conference when he first came here, he said he’s here to win Super Bowls. A lot of pressure. Definitely a lot of pressure, but at the same time, he felt that we had the players that could win here, and we did.”

Calvin Pace was a seven-year veteran that night. He had never made the playoffs in five seasons as a Cardinal and one as a Jet.

“It seemed like something that was never gonna happen,” Pace told The Post. “I’m not gonna say I felt like we won the Super Bowl, but it was just a feeling of just joy. It was just elation. You felt like you had won it all.”

Ryan’s maiden Jets team would knock off the Bengals in Cincinnati six days later, and then the Chargers in San Diego before losing the AFC Championship game in Indianapolis to Peyton Manning and the Colts.

“We snuck in the Big Dance, and we made a lot of noise … we put ourselves on the map,” Revis said.

A year earlier, the Brett Favre Jets had lost the regular-season finale and a shot at the division finale at home to the Chad Pennington Dolphins. “It was tough, because you’re seeing your former teammate on the other side,” Revis said. “He was all Jets, he was all in, he was here, and he whipped us,” Revis said.

D’Brickashaw Ferguson and Nick Mangold were rookies on New Year’s Eve at the end of 2006 when a first-year coach named Eric Mangini and the fiery Pennington punched their ticket to the tournament with a 23-3 victory over the Raiders at rollicking Giants Stadium. But the second time he made it was the charm. Ferguson leapt into the stands, and almost pulled down some fans who attempted to lift him.

“It’s almost like divine intervention,” he said at the time. “I don’t think it’s coincidence. I hope God’s a Jets fan.”

Mangold recalls the day he made the playoffs as a rookie.

“I do remember [10-year veteran] Pete Kendall saying, ‘You got to enjoy this, and cherish this, because it doesn’t happen often.’ I think he said he went his rookie year, and then hadn’t been back since,” Mangold said.

Now Mangold is the 10-year veteran. Happy New Year in Buffalo is the only option.